All in Index Funds
We all discover some tips, tricks and shortcuts in life that are real time savers, or they just help us understand our place in the world a bit better, but it takes someone to tell us about them in the first place. I consider the Rule of 72 and Sharesight as two useful personal finance hacks, which of course I’m happy to share.
I’ve waited a long time to fill out my own Net Worth Millionaire Questionnaire! YES, our net worth has finally ticked over from 6 numbers to 7 and it’s fair to say I’m delighted. But what is the purpose of me and other people sharing this information? It’s so that you can apply it to your own situation and see the variety of ways that other Kiwi’s have created wealth for themselves and know that it is possible for you as well.
I’ve been getting a few emails and comments along the lines of “can you please consider a post about your overall investment portfolio.” My investing strategy is pretty simple and straightforward and I can't help but think that those who work day in day out in the finance space will scoff and laugh at my lack of analysis and strategy. But don’t scoff too hard, because it appears to be working just fine, thank you. Here is how I allocate the money that comes into my life.
Christmas at my house when I was growing up was always a busy, crowded and fun time. We used to receive heaps of Christmas cards and the most exciting ones were the cards that contained the “annual Christmas letter” from the sender. So, I thought I would write you a Christmas Newsletter from my whanau, with a personal finance twist of course…
Each week I get a lot of emails and it takes up a lot of time, but it’s an honour to answer each of them. People just want someone to ask a money question to but in their day to day lives it’s a complete lottery as to whether they can find the right person in their friend group to talk to, so they write to me instead. So, I just wanted to share with you an edited version of an email exchange I’ve been having with someone over the last few months which will give you an insight into what kind of stuff comes up when I chat to people.
Way back in February 2019 I created an account with Hatch, they were a very new startup at that time and many people had sent me emails asking me to look into them. They have created a simple and intuitive platform that has cut out a lot of the jargon and brokerage fees and made it pretty straight forward for you and I to invest in the biggest companies in the world.
I’ve had my millionaire questionnaire available since July and I thought I’d look at a couple of the questions in particular and see if there are any common threads that we can draw on and I’ve read through each response and gleaned the following advice for you.
This week I received an email from someone who has stumbled upon the big wide world of investing and at the age of 40 has suddenly had their mind blown with the possibilities. He specifically asked about index funds and I also knew I had met a kindred spirit when he said: “compound interest is a new favourite term”.
Since January 2016 I’ve been drip feeding money into the SmartShares NZ Top 50 fund (FNZ) on a monthly basis. I thought it might be interesting for you to actually see what someone else’s ACTUAL investment looks like because chances are that no one else is going to show you their account balance ;-)
